


Sunshine

by 10MonthDay (AwwKeyboardNo)



Series: Sunshine Universe [1]
Category: Hey Arnold!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Relationships, F/M, Implied Future Polyamory, Shortaki Week 2017, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 01:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11636148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwwKeyboardNo/pseuds/10MonthDay
Summary: Helga had known who her soulmate was since she was almost three years old.





	Sunshine

Helga had known who her soulmate was since she was almost three years old. The words carefully sketched into her wrist had been quite clear and distinctive. They were the first words she’d learned to read.

Olga had taught her, in one of the few quiet moments where their parent’s attention was on something other than the elder girl. Helga was two, and hadn’t yet developed an apathy for her sister, so she was happy for the help and attention. 

Olga had pulled Helga onto her lap and pointed out the words, letter by letter. “Hi,” she said, tracing the word with her finger. “There’s the ‘h’ and there’s the ‘i’ and together they make the word ‘hi’. Mkay?” Helga nodded seriously. Olga giggled. “Then, there’s an ‘n’ and another ‘i’ and then ‘c’ and finally ‘e’. What’s that spell, Helga? Can you guess?”

Helga thought for a moment, then shook her head sadly. “Sorry.” 

“Oh, sweetie, you don’t need to apologize.” Olga cuddled her sister for a moment. “It spells ‘nice’. Like when something is good and you like it.”

Helga smiled at her hopefully. “Nice big sister?”

Olga squealed a little. “Nice  _ baby  _ sister too.” She began tracing the last word. “That’s ‘b’, ‘o’, ‘w’. Which spells ‘bow’.” She grinned sweetly at Helga, tugging on the big, pink bow atop the little girl’s head. Helga giggled a little. “So, as a sentence, it says, ‘Hi, nice bow.’ Baby sister, your soulmate sounds like a sweetheart, just like you!”

“Hi, nice bow,” Helga repeated softly, beaming as wide as she could. She brought her hand up to the fabric, clutching it a little.

She vowed to always wear it.

Smiling, suddenly curious, Helga looked at Olga. “What’s yours say?”

Olga’s smile became slightly fixed. “Oh sweetie, that doesn’t matter.” Her hand wrapped around her own wrist, shielding words Helga couldn’t even read. “I’m not my soulmate’s soulmate, and that’s okay.”

Helga gave her a horrified look. “But why? You’re pretty and smart and know ev--every--all the stuff.” She traced over the unreadable words.

‘ _ My name is Mai, do you know where room 209 is?” _

Her big sister gave her a sad smile. “Because sometimes, the person you love doesn’t always love you back.”

“Maybe, they don’t know?” Helga said optimistically. Olga looked even sadder.

“Sometimes, it’s nicer to not tell them, because it’ll make them sad.” She shook her head then, and grinned, wide and plastic, around the sadness in her eyes. “Now, enough about that silly stuff, I wanted to teach you piano!”

The next year, as she drifted further and further away from her elder sister, and continued to be ignored by her parents, Helga trekked the twelve blocks to her new preschool. It was raining, a dog stole her lunchbox, and she got mud  _ all over  _ her new jumper,  _ and  _ her bow. It was the worst day her young brain could remember having. She was cold and sopping wet by the time she reached the building. 

Suddenly though, the rain stopped. There was a warm, sweet voice from behind her. It made her heart jump in her chest. 

“Hi, nice bow.”

She could be excused, then, for the next word to come out of her mouth. “Huh?”    
  
Helga turned then and looked at the face of her soulmate. He looked like sunshine, beaming at her. She loved him immediately. 

“I like your bow, ‘cause it’s pink like your pants.” Then he shuffled inside and the rain came back. 

Staring at the beautiful boy, she didn’t even feel it.

Later, after the teacher had cleaned her up, there was roll call and Helga learned the sunshine boy’s name:  _ Arnold _ . She held the precious word as close to her heart as the first three.

She was desperately looking forward to after snack, when there would be free play and she could go say ‘hi’ back. Perhaps she would compliment the nice hat he was wearing, wih its pretty blue color. Maybe she could tell him how much she liked the interesting shape of his head, or his sunshine smile. Maybe she would start with an apology for such an uninteresting soul mark.

At snack time, though, the older boy, Harold, stole her crackers. And  _ that  _ was when things began to go very wrong. Arnold walked over and held out his own crackers in offering. 

“Want mine?”

For a moment, she stared at his open face, then at his hand, holding the plate of crackers. Then nodded and he handed them off. As he waved goodbye, she noticed the odd, long collection of words tangled around his wrist. She blinked, but she was too far away to read it (if she even could). 

It wouldn’t connect until a little while later what that would mean. 

At that point, though, she was simply filled with elation at his kind gesture. She stared as he made his way back to his friend with the funny hair who held out one of his own crackers for Arnold. She sighed helplessly and stared at the boy with the oblong head, hands clasped together.

Then the laughing began…

\-----

Helga was certain by the time she was four that she was  _ not  _ Arnold’s soulmate. Her heart  _ ached  _ at that, and she knew she could  _ never  _ tell him. Arnold could never know that he was her soulmate.

After she decided that, she made herself a bracelet--like the one she saw Olga wearing all the time--and covered up the carefully written script. 

The bracelet covered up her soulmark, and her hateful words covered up her love. 

Because her love for Arnold didn’t simply go away because she knew she was one half of a soul (but,  _ oh boy _ , did she try). No, it simply grew with each passing year. As he continued to be sunshine personified, she fell more and more in love with the unknowing boy. 

She didn’t get a good look at Arnold’s soulmark (which remained uncovered even as he got older) until she was six and a half. As she sat next to him, she eyed his wrist as she pretended to work on their school project. 

_ “You have a funny lookin’ head. I like it. Wanna play blocks?” _

She’d known from almost the start that she wasn’t his soulmate, but it still kind of hurt to get the confirmation. 

(Which might have been why she took out her heartache by dumping glue on his head.)

\------

When Helga was almost ten, she confessed her feelings to Arnold. She told him everything. She told him about the stalking. She told him about her shrine, and about all her poetry. 

….She told him  _ almost  _ everything.

She  _ couldn’t  _ tell him about her mark. She couldn’t bear to. Because to have  _ that  _ part of her rejected would be  _ horrible _ . But what would be worse than rejection would be  _ obligation _ . 

She  _ couldn’t  _ do to Arnold what had happened to her mom.

Miriam had never had a soulmark, but Bob had had hers. So, though they had nothing in common and barely knew each other, they had dated and, eventually, married. But Helga wasn’t blind. She could see how  _ trapped  _ in her marriage Miriam felt. 

To do that to  _ Arnold _ was just unthinkable. 

So, she kept that part a secret. And when the time came that Arnold gave her a way to deny her own confession, to go back to hiding her love from him, she gladly took it. With that, she went back to loving him in secret.

\----

When Helga was ten and a half, she went to the jungle on a class trip.

She knew the real reason the trip had came to be--that was, so that Arnold could look for his missing parents. Arnold didn’t know that  _ she  _ knew, but when push came to shove, she obviously helped him out. 

Of course, accidents were bound to happen, so Helga shouldn’t have been surprised to lose her bracelet. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Arnold noticed it. 

She was surprised by both, mostly because Arnold was not the only one capable of being oblivious. 

She had passed out after the waterfall. When she had awoken, Arnold was tending to her. Had she had time and ability to be alone just then, she would have swooned over it. There was an odd, almost blank look on Arnold’s face though. He seemed upset about something. Helga chanced a question. 

“What’s wrong, Football Head?”

Arnold blinked and made a bad attempt to smile at her. “Hi, Helga, are you feeling better?”

She scowled at him. “I ache like no tomorrow and I never want to look at water again, but I’m just peachy. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He was lying, badly. 

Helga gave him a flat look. “Spill paste-for-brains, You’re no good at keeping secrets.”

Arnold scowled. “But you’re  _ great  _ at keeping secrets,” he said, voice hard. He tapped her wrist. 

Her bracelet was gone. 

“Ah,” she said, sitting up and lifting her wrist to look at Arnold’s neat handwriting. She had avoided looking at the thing too much over years, to avoid more heartache than necessary, but the script had shifted and changed somewhat, as Arnold’s handwriting had improved. 

“Helga, please don’t lie. Is that mark mine?” Arnold’s voice was quiet. It lost the edge it’d had. Now, he just sounded kind of sad. 

“Yes,” Helga murmured. She stared at the ground. She couldn’t bear to look at him. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

When Helga replied, her voice came out sharp as glass. “What  _ exactly  _ was I supposed to  _ say _ ? ‘Hey, Football Head,  _ along _ with being freakishly in love with you, you’re also my soulmate, but I’m not yours.’”

“ _ Yes _ .”

Helga felt like crying. “ _ Why _ ? Why would I do that to myself? And more importantly, why would I do that to  _ you _ ? You  _ already  _ have _ a soulmate _ .”

Arnold grabbed her hand. She looked up at him, past the burning and blurring building up in her eyes. His face was intense. “Because you  _ are  _ my soulmate Helga.”

Helga blinked away the tears in her eyes and scowled, pointedly staring at his wrist. He followed her gaze and let out a short laugh. “I guess you haven’t been stalking me close enough, if you don’t know about the other one.”  
  
He let go of her hand and pulled off one of his shoes, followed by a drooping sock. Etched into the fine knob of his ankle, in the purple pen that Helga prefered, was an single word.

“Huh?” Helga echoed herself from so very long ago. 

She was very confused. It must have shown on her face, because Arnold spoke. 

“I’ve always had more than one soulmark, it runs in my family.” He blushed. “Grandpa says it’s something to do with having a lot of room for love in our hearts.”

He’d said the word. He’d said the word that had freaked him out so much on that rooftop. He’d said it while talking about  _ his soulmark _ . 

Helga might’ve swooned slightly. But, she was still confused. “But if that’s mine, then who does  _ this  _ mark belong to.” She pointed back to his wrist. 

Arnold grinned. “That’s Gerald’s mark.”

Helga wasn’t actually that surprised. But…. “I was almost certain that he liked Phoebe, and he’s never seemed to like boys like that….”

Arnold actually grinned cheekily at her omission of  _ him  _ seeming like that. “He  _ does  _ like her, and he’s pretty certain he only likes girls. The marks don’t  _ have  _ to be the d-dating kind of love. I’d’ve thought you would’ve known that.”

Helga shrugged shyly. “After I’d decided you didn’t have my mark, I didn’t really wanna think about it…..”

He gave her a sympathetic look and then glanced at her hand briefly, before grabbing it. “So, um, if it’s okay with you, can I give you my answer to what you said on the roof of FTi?”

Helga gulped but nodded. 

He gave her the sunshine smile and began speaking. “Uh, well, I’m still only ten, so I don’t really know if it’s completely in the r--rom---the dating way, but I think I might love you Helga.” Then he leaned forward, kind of slowly, and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. It was the utter opposite from Helga’s kiss almost half a year before, but Helga melted. 

She would take Arnold’s kiss over the first one any day. 

“Hey, guys, are you in--”

Helga and Arnold pulled back from each other to stare at Gerald. He was grinning widely, arms crossed. 

“We were just--”

“He was only--”

“There was a bug--”

Helga sent Arnold a flat look at this and rolled her eyes at Gerald. “We were kissing.”

Arnold went beat red. 

Gerald sighed in mock sadness. “Guess that means you’re off the market then, Arnold.”

If anything, the blond boy went redder, slouching against Helga. “ _ Gerald _ .”

Gerald held up his hands in mock surrender. “Anyway if you two are done with the smooching--”

“Gerald!” Helga and Arnold said together. Their faces were now a matching shade of red. 

The other boy laughed. “We really should get going.”

Even with Arnold helping, Helga wobbled as she got to her feet. She wasn’t sure how much of it was from her impromptu trip down the waterfall, and how much was from just the last few minutes. After she took a moment to get her balance, the trio were off once again.

Their moment was set to the side, to be picked up after Arnold’s parents were safe.

\-----

When Helga was fifteen, she broke up with her soulmate. 

Arnold was going to go live with his parents in San Lorenzo. Or, at least, he had the  _ opportunity _ . He had been debating it, and he’d been leaning towards staying in Hillwood for Helga. 

But she knew how desperately Arnold coveted his time with his parents. And she knew that he would miss either party he left behind. So, Helga made the choice for him. 

She put a hand on his cheek, brushing away a stray tear. “Darling, I’ve had you for thirteen years, they’ve had barely five.”\

“Helga, I….”

“They need you, Arnold, and as much as I--”  _ need you.  _ “--want you here with me….you need to go with them.”

They were both crying then, hugging and pressing kisses wet with tears to each other’s faces. She breathed in his warm smelling hair, ran soft hands over the lovely shape of his head, listened to the soft hitching of his breath, and committed it all to memory. 

Finally, she pulled away, still leaving one hand pressed to his cheek. He leaned into it, almost desperately. “It’s only for a couple years,” she told him. 

He turned to press a kiss to the palm of her hand and she resisted the urge to start crying again. 

“I’ll miss you,” he told her, rather plaintively. 

She gave in to a few more tears. “Oh, my dearest, you know I’ll miss you too. But, please, smile for me, and enjoy the time we have left.”

Arnold gave her a variation of the sunshine smile. Since they had started dating, Helga had seen many different versions of his special smile. But she had never seen this one:

This one, where he was smiling around the shards of a shattered glass heart. 

She immediately burst into more tears. “ _ I love you _ ,” she wept. 

Arnold folded her into another another hug, and she nosed into his shoulder, shaking them both with her crying. “Oh Helga, you  _ know  _ I love you too.” His voice cracked as he spoke, and Helga felt tears in her hair. 

That wouldn’t be the last time either of them cried that night.

\-----

When Helga was almost eighteen, she proposed in a letter.

It’s the first letter she'd sent to Arnold. She had written more than a hundred letters over the past two and a bit years that her soulmate had been gone, but she could never bear to send them. It felt like sending her heart through the mail, and it would rob her emotionally to do so too much. Arnold had sent her plenty, and she cherished every one she got, but she never sent any back. 

That wasn’t to say she didn’t keep in contact with her technically-ex-boyfriend. They spoke on the phone whenever he was able (Bob did  _ not  _ appreciate the long distance fees, but she could care less what he thought). And whenever Arnold had an internet connection, they made good use of their Instant Messenger.

But the only letter she sent was also the only one she would ever have to. 

_ “My Dearest Arnold,  _

_ Surprised? Me too. I didn’t think I would ever get up the guts to do this, but here I am, writing you a letter with actual paper. And, of course, my purple pen that we both adore. I know we’ve talked over the phone about  _ why _ I haven’t done this before, but I still wanted to apologize. You’ve been so very, very patient with me, and I still say I don’t deserve you. _

_ Also, I wanted to remind you that you’ve got a hundred and twenty-five letters (and counting!) waiting for you here when you get back.  _

_ Anyway, before I get to the actual reason I’m writing this thing, let me fill you in on what’s been happening since the last time we talked on the phone (mostly because I’m a chicken-shit and want to put off what I’m writing this for, but what can you do).  _

_ Gerald and Phoebe are still together--though Gerald has said that he’s still waiting for you to come home to him….and I think he was only half joking. (I swear the two of you’s romantic/queerplatonic/what-the-fuck-ever tension is as bad as his and Phoebe’s was. When you get home, me and Phoebe are probably going to lock the two of you in a closet until you talk it out or  _ make out. _ )  _

_ I’m not kidding dollface.  _

_ Grandpa and Grandma and the borders are all fine. Oscar  _ finally  _  got around to taking his GED and he actually  _ passed _. Suzie is over the moon. Mr. Potts proposed to Lola,  _ freaking finally _. Mr. Hyuhn is over that nasty bout of bronchitis. He’s doing good now--and Mai Hyuhn has all but officially moved in to help out around the boarding house, now that grandpa and grandma are nearing their nineties (though with that social work job of hers, she can only give up so much of her time). They all say ‘hi’.  _

_Actually, speaking of Mai, I’ve been, maybe, working on a matchmaking project--probably since, with you not around, I have to get rid of all my hopeless romantic-ness_ somehow _. I don’t think I ever told you, but the reason I was so convinced in grade school that I wasn’t your soulmate, is because that’s what Olga said about_ _her_ _soulmate--that they’d already had a soulmark for someone else. But, I noticed a few weeks back that Mai keeps both her wrists covered, and I asked her about it (yeah, I’m as rude as ever, what else is new?). She says she found one of them, but the other one she hasn’t seen since high school--and she even_ showed _me them. And one of them_ totally _matched with Olga’s. So, lately, I keep setting the two of them up to run into each other. Mai’s definitely catching on, but she_ _so_ _doesn’t mind, and Olga is more oblivious than you used to be. Hopefully they’ll figure things out before you and I are in our thirties or something._

_ So. Um. I was thinking of coming up to visit you soon. I know my last visit there didn’t go so well (what with me being sick the entire time), but I really miss your dumb face. Like a lot. And I was thinking about some other stuff too. The last couple times we talked on the phone, we talked a bit about getting poli sci degrees, and about me being a writer, about you doing something with all your experience in San Lorenzo. We did talk a bit about colleges, but what do you think about UoW? It’s got a bunch of good programs and scholarships, and it’s only about a three hour drive to Hillwood. What do you think?  _

_ Heck, to save on financials, we could get married before we go! _

_...That wasn’t how I wanted to put that sentence….But I’m forcing myself to keep it.  _

_I know we haven’t_ officially _gotten back together yet (though I don’t think we officially ‘broke up’ either), but I’m serious. I’ve thought about this for a while now, and I genuinely want to marry you Arnold._

_ The question is though, do you want to marry me? _

_ I’ll wait for your answer before I do anything serious. _

~~_ ( _ _ I maybe might have already bought you a ring _ _ ) _ ~~

_ Love, _

_ Your Helga” _

Arnold was in Hillwood within a week, at her door. 

“You asked me to marry you through a letter,” he stated blankly as Helga opened the door.

Helga blushed, but couldn’t help but grin. “Hello to you too Arnold.”

Arnold blinked, and then laughed and pulled her in for a hug and peck on the lips. “Hi, My Helga.”

She hugged him back. “I missed you,” she whispered into his neck. His hold tightened. 

“I missed you too.”

When he eventually pulled back again, his eyebrows were raised. “You asked me through a  _ letter  _ to marry you,” he said again. “You said you  _ bought me a ring _ .”

Helga’s laugh was nervous. “I can’t tell if you’re mad at me for it or not.”

“I’m not mad,” he reassured her. “And I shouldn’t be surprised, but you’re so good at surprising me.”

They smiled at each other for a moment, but after a bit, Helga shifted uneasily. “So, I assume, if you’ve made a rather impromptu visit to Hillwood, you have an answer….”

He beamed at her, and it was the sunshine smile, wider than she had ever seen it before. “Of course I want to marry you Helga.” He rubbed the back of his neck, laughing sheepishly. “I was actually planning to propose to  _ you  _ when I got back officially…. _ you’re not the only one who has a ring…. _ ” His last words were a mumble. 

Helga tugged him in suddenly for a kiss, joy rushing through her veins like sugar. Arnold kissed her back, his delight just as obvious as her own. 

“I love you, soon-to-be Mr. Shortman-Pataki,” Helga said, pulling back just enough to murmur against his lips. He grinned against hers. 

“Well I love you back, soon-to-be  _ Mrs _ . Pataki-Shortman.”

Then he went right back to kissing her and that was all they did for a time. 

\------

“You know I wasn’t kidding about Gerald and that closet.”

“I know.”

“I might do it at the wedding.”

“I wouldn’t even be surprised.”

“Yeah, you would.”

“Yeah, I would.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have lots of headcanons about this AU, pls ask me about them!


End file.
